


At Close of Day

by Khemi



Series: The Sun in Flight [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angels, Angst, Blood Magic, Character Death, End of the World, Fallen Angels, Gender-Neutral Hawke, Going to Hell, Magical Artifacts, Minor Body Horror, Multi, On Hiatus, POV Third Person Limited, POV Varric Tethras, Prophetic Visions, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resurrection, Sexual Content, The Fade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 09:05:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khemi/pseuds/Khemi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oppression's betrayal seemed the worst thing Varric would ever have to deal with, but now God is missing and apparently <em>he's</em> the one everyone thinks has the key to getting that holy asshole back up onto his throne.</p>
<p>Well, not him <em>exactly</em>, no, he's just the <em>compass</em>- They need <em>Hawke,</em> they need <em>hope,</em> and before this is through, they'll need an impossible man who was scattered to ashes, a man lost far beyond anywhere Varric can hope to See.</p>
<p>But he's Seen one thing coming, as inevitable as it is terrible. The Abyss is waiting, down and deeper in the dark; it's waiting, and hidden inside its gaping maw is the end of everything Varric Tethras has ever known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Close of Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dacadaca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dacadaca/gifts).



> A few notes:
> 
> \- This is a sequel to [The Dying of the Light.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4545351/chapters/10346304) You _can_ start here, but I highly recommend you read them both in order!
> 
> \- Fenris does not show up early on in this fic, although Fenhawke is the _main ship_ and will be the most discussed through the story.
> 
> \- More main characters will appear than I have separately tagged, but I have chosen not to tag those I consider spoilers for the story, as I want to maintain the surprise. Please bear in mind that _anyone_ could appear throughout the course of this fic.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric is fine with visitors, but the ones that don't knock are the worst.

_The Archangel stood before them, tall as a tower, with eyes as many as there are stars,_  
_He spoke in the voice of the earth quaking violent, ‘children, defilers! You know not what you seek.’_  
_They were gripped by his words as if with a madness, clawing and scratching at their ears and their faces._  
_‘I am Wisdom,’ spoke he. Their ears bled and hearts seized. ‘I am only gained bitter, and bloody, and red.’_

  


The smell of incense had long curled between his heavy curtains and dusted his table with a mist of acacia and sandalwood, a haze of bay and dittany. On particularly optimistic days, it was a silvery ribbon of oakmoss and vanilla; on days like today, when the whiskey ran low and the night grew long, he burned his money and the ambergris.

It smelled like the musk of half-remembered, sweat-dampened skin, curled over him as heavy breaths echoed in his ear, long since replaced by the brief rushes of an oscillating fan. The heat remained, at least, just as sticky on his brow and beneath his shirt, even with far too many buttons popped open and far too few cares given for how much of his skin was bared to the old photographs and painted portraits gazing down from their places set upon the peeling wallpaper and the dusty, unpolished mantles.

Varric flicked another tarot card onto the varnished oak beside his raised feet, rolling his eyes with an audible sound of distaste as the Lovers clasped their hands brazenly in this lair of the lonely and the damned.

“Ah, Fate, my dear serah. Still as terrible a sense of humour as ever, I see.”

“She never was one for jokes.”

It was hard to tell if he was more frustrated by the invasion of his privacy without so much as a knock on his door, or by the fact that his unexpected guest hadn’t used the door at all. As it was, he settled for both and added some betrayal to the mix for flavour, covering it all with a pleasant smile as he lazily shuffled the deck.

“The Seeker told me I was free to go.” She had, too, and rather _insistently,_ with some exasperated muttering about _the sooner the better._ It had been the first time they had seen eye to eye, and of _course_ it wouldn’t last. When had he ever been so lucky?

“The Seeker does not speak for _us,_ and you know that. Her word is her bond, but it is not our law.”

Varric sighed, flicking another card across the wood, the Sun spinning lazily across to settle facing the fingers that plucked it up, lifting it for bright golden eyes to admire.

Not the _right_ gold, though, never the _right_ gold. That was long faded to memory and passed into the outer reaches of not even God knew where.

“What do you want, Cullen?”

“What does anyone want when they come here?” The Angel pushed back the chair he was rudely standing in front of and finally sat in it, tossing the card back to the Prophet with a frown too old for the youth that lingered in his face as he leaned forward on the polished oak that paled with his hallowed glow. “I want a fortune told, Prophet. That _is_ what you offer in this…” He glanced about the darkened room, the cracked in the walls showing even through the paper. “…self-made prison, is it not?”

“This isn’t a prison.”

“I don’t see you leaving it.”

“Touché,” Varric murmured, and the kindness of his smile wore thin. He turned his gaze to his cards, those eyes too invasive even when they were focused intently on the old incandescent bulb he had hidden behind a pinned-up red scarf. “So kind of an Archangel to visit such a terrible place, then, isn’t it?”

“We go wherever the duty takes us.”

“Hardly a life worth living.”

“We are not _living_ ,” Cullen answered bitterly, “nor blessed with _choice_.”

Varric placed his cards down, carefully adjusting them until they were perfectly lined up in a small brick of promises and perchance. There were many foolish things he’d done in his time, but plucking at the notes of jealousy and pain that thrummed below the _terrible_ attempt at a calm voice Cullen was forcing out… Even _he_ wasn’t fool enough to risk it.

“Three cards,” he said instead, tapping the deck. “Past, present, and future.”

“Just the future will do.”

“…And thinking those things is why _I_ am the Prophet, and _you_ are the one asking for my help.”

To his credit, Cullen accepted that with a nod, instead of arguing like everyone else who thought they knew more about Sight than the Seer. It was a point in Curly’s favour, albeit one of very few, though Varric had always rather thought he and Cullen would get on much better if there was more _Cullen_ and less _Wisdom_ and _much_ less _Wisdom being a self-righteous ass about everything_. When an Angel got inside someone, sometimes the someone stayed loud, sometimes they were choked to silence, and sometimes, with people like Cullen, it felt like neither being in the body was willing to give up any ground, and eventually it would drive them both down a two-for-one path to madness. Wisdom was _loud_ , and Cullen was _meant_ to be _weak_ ; funny how many Angels thought they understood the humans they came for, and how few of them were ever right about it.

Varric drew the Fool without looking and pondered it for a moment, an appropriate title with inappropriate intent. He sighed and shuffled it back in, again, glancing around for the other deck he knew he had somewhere, something clean for Cullen to shuffle and leave his own mark on-

“I don’t want my own.”

“Did I say that out loud?” Varric shot him a quick glance that was one pleasant lie away from a glare, smile wearing so thin he was near certain breaking some sort of natural law by maintaining it. Of course he hadn’t spoken out loud! Some Saw and some Heard and some weren’t polite enough to pretend they didn’t, even when it made his usually fluid train of thought turn sluggish and guarded. He sat through the discomfort with a smirk plastered over the cracks.

“I came for _your_ fortune, Prophet, and I know you can give it.” Cullen placed his hands on the table, folded over one another. “You may tell me lies, if you wish, so long as the fortune is told to whom it concerns.”

Well now. That wasn’t _quite_ what he’d agreed to.

“I didn’t say I’d-”

“You agree to _a_ fortune, Varric. I never said it was mine.”

“But I hardly made a promise to do it.” Varric shrugged lightly, looking away. “No reason to go through with it but choice.”

“And yet, you’re going to.” Cullen smiled, ignoring the way his host bristled at him, and raised a finger to point at the deck. “Perhaps you won’t do it _because_ I asked, exactly, but I _did_ ask, didn’t I? And now you’re wondering why. The guidance I follow would surely already know your path, and even if they did not, they would never have been so brazen as to send _me._ So why am I here? What does Wisdom have to gain from this? Something selfish, that you could find first, and keep from me? Or a gift, that you are too curious to risk refusing?”

Varric looked down at his cards, and _heard_ Cullen’s smile widen.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Honestly, there would have been no greater pleasure than telling him to get out, that he was _wrong,_ that Varric was fine not knowing and he could take his wisdom and introduce it to his _ass;_ unfortunately, as Varric ran his hands lightly over the woven grain of the cards that knew him better than any other, he was also infuriatingly aware that Cullen was entirely _right._

“Three cards,” he repeated to himself, a concession of defeat. “Well, well. It seems I’m in a corner, doesn’t it?”

“The past, the present, and the future.” Cullen swept his hand over the empty space between them. “Perhaps they’ll write another tale for you to tell.”

Varric didn’t shuffle, not again, already sure the card his fingers were turning warm was the one, but he bit the inside of his cheek as he took it and placed it, letting it sit in its sweet obscurity for a moment before he turned the card up to bare its painted secrets. He could feel Cullen’s gaze on his face as his fingers traced the line from ankle to head on the paper, a wryer smile tugging at his lips.

“The Hanged Man,” he provided for his guest, though he doubted he really needed to. “Now, in _my_ past, I think I can skip the vague definition. It’s all about sacrificing what’s easy and normal to do something crazy, but something that _matters._ ”

“Surely you’ve done that more than once in your life?” Cullen inclined his head, expression passive and voice a more earnest sort of calm. Varric laughed; of course he had, over and over, a cycle of thinking he’d done all that he could possibly do only to find the world demanded more of him- and every time, _every time,_ he’d gone and done it, hadn’t he? A fool hanging by his ankle, and all the world turned upside down.

Of course he’d done it more than once.

“There was one time, though. The last time. Really took the cake.” He laughed, raising the card and looking it over before he used it to point at Cullen, wiggling it with his words. A story to tell, hm? He could manage that, just one more story, one more fading hurrah. “Where should I start?”

“The beginning, usually.”

Varric smiled, gave a little snort.

“So an Angel and a Demon walk into a bar…”

✥

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, that sounds familiar.
> 
> It's me again, the Khem, back in the world of Angels and Demons and Riders. A bit of a POV change (although not really, TDOTL was always Varric's words, after all) and we're ahead to something based more in Inquisition, though old friends will be returning, and more things explained as they are, not how Varric would like people to believe.
> 
> I hope if you enjoyed TDOTL you'll give it a chance, or if you're a new reader you'll find it to your liking. Whatever the case, here we go! Back to where one story ended, and everything else began.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on [Tumblr](http://khemi.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/KhemiEvans).
> 
> Comments are always welcome :)


End file.
